Ireland’s young people are leaving as they are no longer proud to call this country home

Another one has departed. She packed her young life and her university qualifications into her suitcase and flew away. Now she is ensconced in an affordable apartment near Bondi beach, living a better life. Before she left, her work colleagues met for a farewell lunch in an over-priced Dublin restaurant. These gatherings are increasingly frequent. The numbers of those left behind being ever more depleted. The Central Statistics Office reported last August that 27,600 people had left Ireland in the year to April 2022. That was an increase of 4,800 during a pandemic of global lockdowns.

A man in his late 20s at the lunch table calculated that, by the end of this year, only two of his circle of a dozen friends will still be living in Ireland. The others have either gone already or are going to New York, London, Milan, Lisbon, Sydney, Melbourne and Toronto. Their friend said he wanted to leave too.

I asked him if his disillusion was because he could not afford to buy or rent a place to live in Ireland. His answer pierced my heart.

“That’s one thing,” he said, “but the state of public infrastructure and services as well and the whole attitude here. I don’t like Ireland any more. I’m sick of all the bragging about how it’s the best country in the world – the friendliest, the best fun, the most generous – and I’m sick of all the racist comments I hear. All they ever talk about are the people coming into the country. They don’t care about all the people leaving it.”

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It would be tempting to dismiss his analysis as the ranting of a privileged scion of post-Troubles, post-Catholic, post-grim, dreary, insular Ireland. Tempting, but facile. What floored me about his answer was the realisation that there are Irish migrants who are not being wrenched from their beloved homeland by necessity or even as a “lifestyle choice”, as former finance minister Michael Noonan infamously put it during the economic crash, but because they have fallen out of love with their country. The emigrant wake has transmuted into obsequies for an Ireland that many of their generation believe no longer exists.

There are 3,335 refugees and asylum seekers being housed in Dublin 24, encompassing Tallaght... Dublin 6, which embraces desirable Ranelagh, has just 51 refugees and international protection applicants

They see a self-satisfied Ireland with hypocrisy at its heart; one that basks in its Hip Hibernia tech-fuelled prosperity and liberalism while creating an inhospitable country for many of its citizens. One that cherishes its phenomenal diaspora and the native céad míle fáilte, just as long as the visitors don’t appear on the establishment’s own doorstep. Nowhere is this double standard as pronounced as in the treatment of inward migrants.

Figures released by the Department of Integration to Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon have confirmed what we already knew: the wealthiest neighbourhoods have the fewest Ukrainian war refugees and asylum seekers living among them. There are 3,335 refugees and asylum seekers being housed in Dublin 24, encompassing Tallaght, where the unemployment rate in some areas is more than 30 per cent compared to the national level of 4.4 per cent.

Dublin 6, which embraces desirable Ranelagh, has just 51 refugees and international protection applicants. The affluent, coastal constituencies of Dublin Bay South and Dún Laoghaire have the smallest numbers of such residents.

Racial prejudice

No matter where young Irish people travel to in the world, they will encounter racial prejudice. The issue is that this is not what Ireland is supposed to be like. Nor is it what Ireland wants to think it is like. The stark divide between multiculturalism and monoculturalism, especially in the capital city, is the antithesis of the country’s self-image as “the friendliest, the best fun, the most generous”.

One ordinary working day in Talbot Street in Dublin’s north-city centre, a woman screamed at a man who passed her on the footpath: “Go back to the jungle.” The man’s skin was black, his suit was good and his briefcase was held rigid in his right hand. He showed no emotion. He was walking in a street where, appearances indicated, about 30 to 40 per cent of the pedestrians had not been born in Ireland. Yet, had he crossed the Liffey to Dublin 2 and wandered into Leinster House, the man would probably have been in a minority of one.

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That was 19 years ago. Official Ireland was still palely loitering in adjusting to the global age of migration while places such as Talbot Street were cacophonous with workers from Russia, eastern Europe and Nigeria busy building Celtic Tiger citadels.

Nearly two decades later, with 17 per cent of the population now having been born abroad – not to mention the families of previous immigrants – virtually nothing has changed. Apart from a Taoiseach with Irish-Indian ethnicity, official Ireland remains pale, stale and predominantly male. The Oireachtas, the Civil Service, semi-State and regulatory organisations, governing and professional representative bodies present a phalanx of traditional Irish names and faces.

Two Irelands have evolved – one that says not on my doorstep while telling the other one to put up and shut up. Do as I say, not as I do, is smug Ireland’s motto

Check out the boards of RTÉ, Sport Ireland. Ibec, the Bar Council, the Press Council, the Law Society, the National Gallery of Ireland, the Abbey Theatre, the compliance committee of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, and you will find a gallery of directors as representative of contemporary Ireland as a rinsed-out John Hinde postcard.

Politicians repeatedly say that were it not for doctors and nurses coming from other countries to work here, Ireland’s health service would be at death’s door. Yet the composition of the boards of the Health Service Executive, the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland and the Medical Council reflect a country where everyone’s surname starts with an O or a Mac. As ever in this country, two Irelands have evolved – one that says not on my doorstep while telling the other one to put up and shut up. Do as I say, not as I do, is smug Ireland’s motto.

This is why it is important that as many people as possible should participate in tomorrow’s national rally against racism, starting at 1.30pm in Dublin’s Parnell Square. It gives us all an opportunity to assure people coming into Ireland that they are welcome here, while also sending a message about the Ireland we want to live in ourselves – a country our children and the next generations might be proud to call home.